Advocates of legal reform yesterday staged a protest in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei, calling on Minister of Justice Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) and the government to implement comprehensive changes to the nation’s justice system.
The protesters also demanded the removal of prosecutors and judges accused of corruption and abuse of judicial authority.
They called on the government to investigate the conduct of former Special Investigation Division prosecutor Yue Fang-ju (越方如), who headed the corruption probe into former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), and named eight judges who they said should be dismissed from office.
“We ask Chiu and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to put into action what they have promised, to clean up the justice system and make it more responsive to public needs,” 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign executive director Peter Ku (古文發) said. “Judicial reform is urgently needed, because the judiciary is still filled with people appointed by the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] administration, who carry on with their KMT ideology and pro-China mentality.”
Despite people voting Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party into office, the judiciary continues to uphold the unjust laws of the KMT, Ku said.
“This situation must change, or many more Taiwanese will be persecuted by KMT-minded prosecutors and judges. We must begin to build up our Taiwan nation,” he said.
“It is import to initiate reforms to build a ‘Taiwanese justice system’ for true justice, equality and fairness to prevail in society,” he added.
The group filed a lawsuit against Yue earlier this year, accusing her of abusing her position by presenting false evidence and prejudicial conduct in her probe to indict Chen on corruption charges,
The group also filed a case against eight judges, including Hsieh Chun-hsiung (謝俊雄), Wei Hsin-ho (魏新和) and Hsu Wen-liang (徐文亮), accusing them of abusing their authority and wrongful conduct in prosecuting former minister of transportation and communications Kuo Yao-chi (郭瑤琪), who was found guilty of corruption in March 2013.
“Yue is well known for her KMT ideology and her prosecutorial investigations are colored by her partisan interest, as evidenced by her selective persecution of former president Chen and other DPP officials. She based her indictment of Chen on false evidence given by unreliable witnesses who said the former president had received NT$300 million [US$9.55 million at current exchange rates] in illegal political donations,” Taiwanese National Party spokesman Hung Hsien-cheng (洪顯政) said.
The protesters, led by judicial reform advocate Chang Chun-jung (張春榮), marched to the Presidential Office Building and presented a petition.
A liaison officer from the Presidential Office accepted the petition and promised to give them a response in two weeks’ time.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400